Step 4: Basic Education
by Steve HokeVisualizing a pyramid may help you understand the critical building blocks in your preparation for missionary service. Your basic education serves as the broad base. By that we refer to your formal schooling, which for most will include primary, secondary, and some kind of college/university education. Others of you will prefer after secondary school some kind of vocational training that equips you for specific tasks. In this way, you are building your skill set for the future, which hopefully will dovetail into cross-cultural missions.
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A new face of missions requires a diversity of skills in the cross-cultural force. Here’s a sampler: anything in computers, data management, Web-page designs; physiotherapy and occupational therapy certifications; electrical and mechanical maintenance abilities; teaching English as a second language. All of these the Spirit can use.
Further experience, including short-term service, your job(s), church ministry, and relationships, are the building blocks that stretch you higher and at the same time begin narrowing the structure. Practical missionary training and lifelong learning are the blocks that complete the point of the pyramid.
Keeping that picture in mind, let’s look at establishing a solid base for your long-term missionary service.
Take an honest look at where you are right now. Is the academic program you’re pursuing or have completed adequate for what lies ahead? Can you supplement your basic undergraduate education with other courses? If not, can you find the courses you need? Are they available in your present college or university? Can you find them as distance learning courses, or will you have to change schools?
A solid general education is an invaluable foundation for long-term cross-cultural ministry, and it is the educational base most mission agencies prefer. It provides a breadth of understanding and a reference point for all future training. It gives the graduate a general grasp of the liberal arts (especially social and behavioral sciences), natural science, and mathematics.
When studied in the context of a Christian college with an integrating core of biblical studies and theology, the liberal arts become the “liberating arts,” because they bring all of human inquiry into proper relationship with the freeing truth of Jesus Christ. Christian students in a secular college or university will have to work extra to make these connections. It’s worth the investment. Start where you are. Ask your church or mission agency what courses they suggest or require.
If you’re in some stage of undergraduate education: Check your experience for several major components. Most churches and agencies recommend fitting in some courses in cultural anthropology and sociology; if you haven’t taken them yet, add them to your schedule in the semesters ahead. And jump at a chance for a course in linguistics!
Also take courses about international relations or regional histories. Macro-economics will broaden your understanding of the critical dynamics pulsing in our world today. Courses in international development will expose you to global inequities that threaten to tear our world apart along ethnic, economic, and political lines.
If you have already completed your under-graduate study: Find the best way to add three major components: (1) biblical training (whether acquired in a non-formal or formal setting), (2) introductions to anthropology and cross-cultural communication, and (3) specialized training in a vocational skill that would give you viability in the global marketplace (see Options for Learning).
Most critical to a solid basic education are some foundational courses in Bible and theology and missions. Many churches and agencies will require prospective candidates to have the equivalent of at least one full year of biblical studies and missions. However, given the changing nature of our world and the values of Generation X, many missions are now accepting candidates with less formal biblical and mission education. It’s not that less education is needed. It’s just that we realize that front-loading too much formal education before a candidate has bonded with a people, ministry, and country may be counterproductive.
You’ll need some understanding of the world’s religions and of church history. Get the big picture of the world’s religions and of church history - particularly missions history. It’s true: Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The “World Christian Foundations” course developed by the U.S. Center for World Mission in Pasadena, California, is a comprehensive attempt to meet this need in a pattern of half-time distance education that you can begin right now with your pastor or qualified lay person as a mentor. You can complete a B.A. or earn an M.A. through this course, even after moving to the field. If you can’t fit in this heavy a program right away, at least get an overview through the “Perspectives on the World Christian Movement” course or the “Vision for the Nations” video mini-series.
There’s a rich array of educational options from which you can choose: Bible schools, Christian colleges and universities, Christian graduate schools and seminaries, local churches’ credit or non-credit courses in biblical basics, and an exploding array of seminars and modules on the Internet. You might even consider studying in another English-speaking country or in the country where you hope to minister. Each of these training options will be described in greater detail in the following article.
In addition, there is a growing number of summer programs, intensive courses, and self-study distance learning courses that can provide you with the basics in Bible study and missions work while you’re working full-time or still enrolled in college.
Some agencies and churches will take candidates with a Bible or Christian college education and send them overseas after just a few weeks of orientation. Many missionaries take additional training gradually during their furloughs and study leaves.
Other agencies are designing tracks which place university graduates overseas for two years of initial language and culture learning before bringing them back for specialized Bible and missions training which focuses on the particular people among whom the candidates have chosen to live and minister. In either case, the new pattern is evident: get your feet wet first; bond with a people; take some first steps in ministry; and then, upon your return to North America, seek further specialized training or retooling.
As you can see, churches and agencies are becoming more flexible in the design and timing of basic education programs. Whatever route you take, you will get missionary training - whether that training is formal and done in advance or through the “school of hard knocks.” Regardless, the preparation that you receive will make you less vulnerable to premature and painful attrition.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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